AEW’s Creative Direction for Jon Moxley’s Faction Revealed

Jon Moxley shocked fans at WrestleDream 2024 by winning the AEW World Title from Bryan Danielson, then further surprising everyone by putting a plastic bag over Danielson’s head. Moxley has since been dominating AEW alongside his new faction and the creative direction for the group has now been revealed.

Jon Moxley’s current faction, the Death Riders, consists of Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, PAC, Wheeler Yuta, and Marina Shafir. Together, they’ve been wreaking havoc in AEW, taking down several top stars in recent months. As of now, there’s no indication that their destructive path is slowing down.

In an interview with the New York Post, Jon Moxley talked about the company’s “hard reset” with the Death Riders storyline. Moxley emphasized that everything that has happened so far doesn’t matter and described this as “Day Zero.” He explained that while things may not seem very different right now, changes will come gradually through consistent, small steps over time.

“Everything that has happened up until this point doesn’t matter. This is Day Zero. We begin from here, and it might not look much different right now, but it will, and things are accomplished by small incremental steps, doing little things consistently. And that is how big changes are made over periods of time.”

Advertising

Advertising

Regarding the creative direction of the angle, Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported that this storyline is largely driven by Moxley, with AEW President Tony Khan agreeing to it. While Khan is still overseeing the overall direction of AEW television, many of the ideas and dialogue are coming from Moxley himself.

“I do know that this is Moxley’s deal as far as the angle goes and [AEW President] Tony Khan was agreeable to do it. Tony Khan is still overseeing it, like everything on the television, but a lot of the ideas and verbiage is coming from Moxley.”

We have also reported that AEW has no plans to add more members to the Death Riders at the moment. Jon Moxley is set to defend his AEW World Championship against Orange Cassidy in the main event of the Full Gear pay-per-view. Fans are expecting that Moxley’s faction, the Death Riders, may interfere to sabotage Cassidy’s chances. It’s clear that AEW plans to continue this storyline into 2025, so it will be interesting to see what direction they take in the coming months.